falls from grace

because of the noise she makes in the morning
because of her insistence on closed shutters
because of the way she hesitates before a map
because of the indelicate way she drives
because of her need to be held and touched
long after the argument is over
because of her breezy handling of conflict
because of her conservative approach to a dinner menu
because of her wild swings between hunger and overindulgence
because of the faultlines of her boundaries
because of her unwillingness to bend toward weakness
because of her unawareness of her own body,
her clumsy negotiation of a sidewalk, a bedroom, a door
because of her easy criticisms, her punishing eye,
her self-diminishment
because together they could not always line up the story
they'd begun with, a cozy scene of sexy familiarity
and a smooth stretch of time when there was nothing to do
but lap up their beauty, their stunning possibility
because together they were not as they had once thought,
a pair of puzzle pieces locking swiftly into place
because they were fragile and imperfect and foolish creatures
destined for certain doom and disaster
they were now, and would forever be, taking these falls from grace,
tumbling from the heavens each time they managed to climb back up,
into a clammy, crumbly earth below where, unbeknownst to them,
something was stubbornly, and beyond reason,
taking root.

a light capable of change

Sometimes, it's just the slant of sun the morning, or a reunion with an old friend. Sometimes it's just good coffee, or a compliment a stranger offers looking your way. Whatever it is, you realize you've had enough. The fine focus you keep giving your little frustrations. The casual fuming you fan out about your bank account, your job hunt, the condition of your body. All of this adds up, or rather, subtracts into, a flimsy existence, a half-life, an embattled, embittered center of disequilibrium. How can the world not suffer under your dark cloud? How can the bathroom mirror rid itself of all those grey smudges? How can the lemon tree on your back deck not plummet from neglect? Arrows in your foot, at your back, in your heart. Something loveless and uncertain clinging to your neck, dragging you down into the mud. Enough. The light is changing. You are a light capable of change. There is a glow in you hungry for air. There is air in you fiery and free. The street you have been walking leads to nowhere in particular, to a dense dark wood that is better left unknown. Do not mistake that darkness and density for opportunity, for eventual renewal and your ultimate heroism. Turn around. Look up. A sky awaits, an impossible, possible blue.

with the wineglass almost empty

I am looking at the moon's slow rise
above this city, this windswept hill,
this winding block, this square house,
this little body breathing, unselfconsciously,
into the final stretch of evening. I want
to pray correctly to such a gift, fold hands
together with discrete reverence, bend slight as a breeze
to the window and send a soft song through the glass.
I want to remember how fragile and perfect time is,
how the world's furious moments can fall into a lake-calm,
how clouds like flour can dust even the dirtiest passage,
how the heart can curve into a conch shell,
echo wetly and warmly the ocean it came from.
Love, your fingertips have been here, your lips
a stain of easy welcome, something of my body
imprinted with yours, our various surfaces colliding.
The way we cup around each other like circles.
The duvet of cheek against cheek. The giggle of eyelashes.
How I have begun to taste you even in sleep,
a single bud-drop expanding on my tongue,
sweeter than anything that came before it.